Inspiration of the Day: William Kamkwamba on building a windmill

Inspiration of the Day: William Kamkwamba on building a windmill

Our lecture today in our “Introduction to Renewable Energy Class” at Yale University this summer session was on Wind Power. I could not help but think about a TED video that I had discovered years ago on William Kamkwamba that still gives me goosebumps to date.

William Kamkwamba from Malawi started life with his family eating only one meal a day.  As a matter of fact, life was getting so hard, in his own words, “because of hunger, I was forced to drop out of school.” At the age of 14, William wanted to change his life and that of his family's. With the little knowledge that he had of English, he decided to go and visit his local library. He found a book on wind energy and made the decision to build his family an electricity-generating windmill from spare parts, working from rough plans he found in the library book. He succeeded in building this windmill and powered a few light bulbs and a radio in his home. Despite his circumstance, and with limited resources, he was still able to improve his and his family’s life. Please watch his incredible story in this TED video:

William Kamkwamba on building a windmill

Introduction to Green Engineering #YaleSS

INTRODUCTION TO RENEWABLE ENERGY

Today marks our second lecture of our “Introduction to Green Engineering" class at Yale University of the summer session. The class is taught by Dr. Yehia Khalil, who has been teaching at Yale since the early 90’s. In the beginning of the first class he had mentioned that this would be his first time to teach this class during the summer. Condensing a 13-week course into 5 weeks will be intense – but so far, this class has been nothing but exciting and inspiring. Exciting to learn, first-hand, the sustainable technology that is known to be the most important issue facing the human race in the 21^st century and inspiring to learn from and engage with the future generation who are learning about current and future technologies in pursuit of sustainable development and in effect, who’s decisions will mold our future.

Our class today was incredible. We began the class learning about Wind Power and spent the other half of the class building and playing with a miniature hydrogen fuel-celled car, a wind turbine, a solar photovoltaic panel, and an electrolyzer.

Here’s a video of the miniature wind-turbine that we assembled

Here’s a video of one of my classmates explaining the mechanics of the “Hydocar.”

Here’s a video of the “Hydrogen Fuel-Celled Car” running

(apologies for our remarks)

Here are some pictures of today’s class taken from Dr. Khalil’s laboratory.

Hydrogen Fuel-Celled Car

Smallest solar-powered car in the world!

Professor Daniel Prober, our  Physics 120 "Energy, Technology and Society" professor at the Yale Summer School, shared with his students the smallest Solar-Powered car in the world on our first day of class. Here's the video:

Today was my first day to be back in class after graduating from my undergrad in '09. Having been absent in an academic setting for some time, it was intimidating to be back in school again.  We are 28 students in this class - half of whom are non-Yale students, and I am one of them. It was inspiring to listen to the input of engaged young and brilliant students throughout the class. Much more so, be taught by someone who is widely respected and has won many global awards in the field of Physics.  I may be the eldest in class but I am excited to learn from my peers who may even know more than I do! It's going to be an interesting semester!

Bagong Bayani - My first article!

My first article of my first column on Bagong Bayani on "Renewable Energy in the Philippines" just came out! I'm actually surprised to have been asked to write a column - I never thought I was much of a writer, exciting news nonetheless! To read the article, go through the magazine below, or click this link, I'm on page 32. : )  

Open publication - Free publishing - More ars nova